


It's a Wonderful Pride

by Lexalicious70



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Fic Challenge, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-06-25
Packaged: 2020-05-19 13:50:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19358269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lexalicious70/pseuds/Lexalicious70
Summary: It’s pride month but Eliot, still grieving for Mike, can see little to celebrate about his sexuality. Can a fussy-yet-benevolent angel reignite Eliot’s flame and show him the light before he sinks into depression, booze and drugs?





	It's a Wonderful Pride

**Author's Note:**

> This is for the Whitespire’s Armory Challenge, week two: “Pride.” I don’t own The Magicians or Good Omens; this is just for fun. Comments and kudos are magic, and as always, enjoy!

 

 

 

 

“You really aren’t going? El, come on!”

 

Eliot looked up from his third glass of wine in 40 minutes to find Margo standing over him, her hands planted on her slim hips in a way that told him, (if he cared,) that she was annoyed. 

 

“I’m really not going.”

 

“We haven’t missed New York City Pride in the three years we’ve known each other! It’s a bigger deal than our trip to Ibiza!”

 

Eliot closed his eyes and Margo hesitated before she sat down on the arm of the couch.

 

“I’m sorry. But El . . . I feel like getting away from Brakebills, even if it’s just for the parade, would be good for you!”

 

“Because I should celebrate.”

 

“It couldn’t hurt!”

 

“And what exactly am I supposed to celebrate?” Eliot drained his glass. “The sound of Mike’s neck snapping? His body rolling to the floor like some fucking marionette with its strings cut? My complete naivety about our relationship?”

 

Margo’s upper lip thinned out and she nodded.

 

“Okay. I get that you’re mourning, and maybe I even get your necessity to literally turn into a living wine decanter. But I’ve told you already, El, that what happened wasn’t your fault! How long are you going to torture yourself over this?”

 

Eliot swung to his feet, picked up his glass, and took refuge behind the cottage bar.

 

“I’ll get back to you on that.”

 

Margo threw her hands in the air.

 

“Fine. Skip Pride, start denying who you are, marry a nice girl from Yonkers! I’ll be in the city if you change your mind.” She turned and swept up the steps and Eliot poured himself another glass of Chardonnay before returning to his prone position on the couch. Some wine slopped out of the glass and stained his paisley shirtsleeve and he frowned at the affront before taking a long draw on the glass.

 

“Maybe I will marry a nice girl from Yonkers,” Eliot muttered as people began to filter out of the cottage, leaving it silent. His hand tightened around the glass and he resisted the urge to hurl it against the nearest wall. “Fuck knows it’d be simpler than—” He made a vague gesture to the empty air and drained the glass. His stomach clenched in protest and he frowned at it. “Oh, nut up. I’ve put you through worse.” He set the glass aside and threw an arm over his eyes to block out the sun pouring through the cottage windows. His pulse pounded in his ears, but the sound of his abused body was infinitely more preferable to the sound Mike’s neck made when Eliot had twisted his head around, like stepping on a dry tree branch on a November hiking trail. Eliot heard it all the time, as if the echo had imprinted itself on his brain synapses and played constantly on a hesitant loop that ground out the sound, a faceless something that cranked a distorted hurdy-gurdy of loss in Eliot’s ear each time silence ruled his senses.

 

“Oh my,” a voice said in Eliot’s ear, “have I been sent to Clutter Cottage? But Druridge Bay is so damp!”

 

“Fucking—!” Eliot yelped, sitting up, his sock-clad feet drumming on the couch cushions. He turned, the room slightly out of focus, to find a slight, and rather fussy-looking man staring around the common room. He wore his curly pale blond hair short and stood before Eliot in tan slacks, a blue button down and a brown vest, a cream-colored waistcoat, and a wide plaid bowtie that might have looked silly on anyone else, but this man wore it as if it were as much a part of him as his skin. It was impossible to guess his age. He didn’t seem to notice that Eliot had spoken.

 

“It’s so glaringly bohemian,” the little man continued. “Rather too much so for Northumberland!”

 

Eliot blinked to assure himself he wasn’t sliding into the hallucinatory stages of acute alcohol poisoning.

 

“I’m sorry? I wasn’t—who are you, exactly?” He asked, and the man gave him a benevolent smile.

 

“I do apologize for not introducing myself. I was just rather surprised to be called here so suddenly.”

 

“Called? Who called you? Was it Margo?” Eliot asked, wondering in a dazed sort of way if she had called some sort of AA wingman or grief counselor before leaving for the city. The man shook his head.

 

“My supervisors. You may call me Aziraphale, and you, dear boy, would be Eliot Waugh, correct?”

 

“Yes,” Eliot nodded, the man’s correct way of speaking and upper-class British accent cutting through some of his drunkenness. It reminded him of the way some of the professors at Brakebills spoke, as if they wanted to be British and constructed their sentences so instead of affecting a phony accent. This man, though, seemed to be the genuine article.

 

“Excellent. Well! Let’s be off then.”

 

“Off? To where?”

 

“To correct some misconceptions you have about your life, Eliot.”

 

“Miscon—I’m sorry, who are you again?”

 

“Aziraphale,” the man said with what seemed like endless patience. “Come along now!” He held out a hand and Eliot took a step back with a flat chuckle.

 

“Recent events would warn me not to go anywhere with strangers who might be disguised as the Beast.”

 

“The Beast!” This Aziraphale huffed. “Well! That’s—how _rude!”_

 

“Is it? Because I—wait, what?” Eliot frowned. “You know about the Beast?”

 

“I know _of_ him because of my line of work, but to suggest that I go around disguised as him?” The man eyed him. “Despicable!”

 

“I’m sorry?” Eliot’s wariness made it a question. “I didn’t mean to offend you. I only meant . . .” Eliot blinked and lost his train of thought as this odd little man caught his gaze and held it. The blue eyes held no trace of obvious wicked intent and Eliot realized they were kind—extremely kind, and in a way that threatened to slam through every alcohol-soaked brick of the multiple emotional walls he’d built since Mike died.

 

“I do apologize,” Aziraphale said after a moment. “There was a bit of a mix up, but now I understand. I am not your Beast, my boy, but you are as in just as much danger now from your own thoughts as you were from it when it attacked.” The man held out his hand again. “Now do come along, it’s getting late.”

 

Eliot reached out his hand and slid his fingers between Aziraphale’s, and the little man paused.

 

“Whoops! Can’t have you inebriated for this venture—” He touched Eliot’s forehead and a peculiar sensation filled his body, as if someone had discovered and flipped a reverse switch somewhere in his abdomen. The wine bottles he’d left near the bar began to fill and the drunken fog he’d been in for nearly three days began to lift. “There we are!”

 

“What—how did you—”

“Your magic and my miracles are somewhat related. Like cousins, almost. I believe that’s why they sent me. You feel as if you are to blame for Michael McCormick’s death—”

 

“How do you know about Mike? And I am responsible! I broke his neck! He was in thrall by the Beast and I—I murdered him!” Eliot wanted to shout, but it seemed the brazen, bitter attitude he’d given Margo had deserted him along with the alcohol.

 

“I saw it when I looked into your soul.”

 

Eliot tugged on the little man’s hand. His skin was pale and soft, with no evidence of calluses or the particular muscle tone most magicians had in their fingers and arms. No, this Aziraphale wasn’t a magician. He—

 

“Wait.” Eliot gasped out a breath that was tinged with jagged amusement. “Did you say ‘my miracles?’”

 

“I did.”

 

“So you’re . . . uh . . .” Eliot gestured with his free hand, and Aziraphale nodded.

 

“An angel.” He smiled and touched Eliot’s cheek. “You believe that the world you know would be a better place if you weren’t the person you’ve become, that your sexuality has been a blight on the people around you . . .that believing in Pride makes no difference to the future because you are contemplating cutting that short. But you’re mistaken on all fronts, and I’m here to show you why. Shall we?” Aziraphale made a slight motion with one hand and in a rapid swirl of color, Eliot found himself standing outside of Dean Fogg’s office.

 

“What are we doing here?” He asked, and Aziraphale nodded toward the door.

 

“You think your influence on others causes negative effects? Look there.”

 

The door to the office slammed open and Margo marched out, her expression set, thunderclouds and damnation in her dark eyes. Eliot took a step forward.

 

“Bambi? Hey, what—”

 

Margo never slowed. She walked through him as if he were made of mist, and Aziraphale watched.

 

“We don’t exist to them, Eliot. This is a universe where you never came to Brakebills, never had the courage to become who you are meant to be.”

 

“Your expulsion and mindwipe will take place immediately, Miss Hanson,” Dean Fogg snapped as he followed on her heels. “We do not tolerate theft of Brakebills property from anyone, least of all a first-year student who decides to practice forbidden magic!”

 

“You can kiss my ass!” Margo shouted, turning on the dean, her expression a mask of hatred and fury. “I don’t need this! I don’t need any of it! Mindwipe me? Wipe your _ass_ , you pompous nobody!”

 

“Jesus,” Eliot muttered as Fogg called security and they hauled Margo away even as she continued to hurl insults at him. “What happened?”

 

“This is what would have happened to Margo if you two had never met during your first year. She arrived here brimming with fury and forging an emotional suit of armor no one would have ever broken through. But then she met you . . . your obvious flair, your refusal to settle into the background, it turned her away from all that anger, softened her edges. Because you would not accept a minor role in the Brakebills community, it caused her to become protective of you. And in that, she learned to curb the anger that would have otherwise shut her out of the magical community forever.” Aziraphale snapped his fingers and the scenery morphed; they stood outside a grimy building, its brick surface painted a fading urine yellow.

 

“Where are we now?”

 

“New Jersey,” the angel replied, “twenty years in the future.” He took Eliot’s hand and they walked through the aging wall. Inside, about half a dozen girls tended to what looked like a failing clothing store geared toward tween and teenage girls. Circular metal racks of clothing, their bases tarnished, littered the floor like elderly soldiers. The beige walls carried the distinct stain of nicotine, and a few customers poked through the merchandise, most of them being the kind of thirtysomething _Jersey Shore_ -loving mothers convinced they could wear their daughter’s clothing. An office door banged open somewhere in the back and Eliot swallowed a gasp as Margo emerged. Her dark hair wasn’t so much pulled back as it was being forcibly strangled, and deep frown lines cut into her complexion. A cigarette smoldered in her right hand, and Eliot noticed that her fingernails, which she’d always kept filed and lacquered, were brittle, broken and gnawed to the quicks. Her dark eyes, ensconced between gaudy green eyeshadow and deep bags that cast bruise-colored shadows beneath them, darted around the room, unblinking.

 

“Rene!” She bawled, her voice lined with a rough edge of years of tobacco use. “Why the fuck isn’t that order out on the floor yet? Are you stupid and slow? Huh?” She cut through the store like a torpedo, the cigarette trailing out smoke behind her. The young salesgirl flinched.

 

“No Mz. Hanson, I’ll unpack it now, I was just helping a customer—”

 

“What you were helping was your useless ass out of my shop! Go on! Beat it!” Margo brandished the clipboard she carried and the shopgirl fled as she burst into tears. “Yeah, go on, cry about it on the unemployment line, honey!” She then turned her baleful stare on the other girls. “And what the fuck are you dizzy cunts looking at, huh? Get back to work!”

 

“That’s what Margo turned into without me?” Eliot asked, watching her slam back into her office, where they could hear objects being hurled around.

 

“Without you, she never learned kindness or trusted anyone enough to soften her edges,” Aziraphale said. “It was your bond that helped mold her into the Margo you know now.”

 

Eliot pushed a hand through his dark curls.

 

“That seems awfully cut and dried,” he argued. “Besides, even if I did influence her for the good, that’s only one instance out of many where it didn’t fuck up someone’s life! And—and then later, we . . . I mean, she and I, and Q . . .” Eliot felt his ears flush with heat. “I can’t say this to an angel! And anyway, isn’t God a homophobe?”

 

Aziraphale’s eyes widened and sparked with humor as he chuckled.

 

“Oh, my dear boy, no! Whatever gave you that idea?”

 

“About 90 percent of Christians I’ve met.”

 

“Ah. Well that’s the fault of those who wrote the Bible, you see. Many of our admirers believe it’s the direct word of God. But it’s the desires of men, Eliot, men who want to control and erase much of what the lord has created, especially those like yourself. It’s something we never quite expected once Adam and Eve were sent out into the world to raise humankind. Now. Tell me about this Q.”

 

“Quentin,” Eliot sighed. “We’re—well—I don’t know what we are now, since he says I ruined his life. And he’s probably right.”

 

“Well. Let’s go have a look, shall we?” The angel flicked his wrist and transported them into Margo’s bedroom, where she and he and Eliot had all shared a dalliance just a few days before. Margo was applying a vicious smoky eye as Quentin sat with his hands clasped between his knees.

 

“And it took me a while to realize what I was so pissed about,” Quentin was saying, and Margo flicked a glance at him.

 

“I could have told you why, Q.”

 

“I know you could have, but I had convinced myself that Eliot fucked up my life that night because—because, uhm, well . . .”

 

Margo waited, busying herself with her compact, and then Quentin blurted it out in that stammering way that Eliot found both frustrating and adorable at the same time.

 

“Because I wasn’t upset about what Eliot and I had done! It—it was Alice, it was how she looked at me, the way she called me a whore, it—because I felt like one, waking up and seeing her sitting there! But before that, when I woke up and felt Eliot’s arm around my waist and his body up against mine, it—it felt right, Margo! The way our legs tangled together, the way he looked when he was asleep.” Quentin ran a hand over his face. “It let me know what I’ve been questioning about myself for years, ever since I went through puberty and developed a serious crush on my best friend James—and then one on Julia.”

 

Margo nodded.

 

“Congratulations, Q, you’ve figured out you’re bisexual.” Her full lips twisted up into a smug yet affectionate smile. “Welcome to the club.”

 

“What? You mean you—”

 

“Bi, pan, girls, guys . . . hot asses that go bump in the night.” She shrugged. “Call it what you want, Q. But El is your sexual lightning rod. Without him, you might never have figured it out and ended up with some frigid, narcissistic bitch because you thought it was supposed to happen that way. Or kept on thinking you were meant to be with Alice which, by the way, I think you’ve both figured out was the result of Mayakovsky’s fox spell, the bastard.”

 

“And what if El and I were just emotion magic and booze?”

 

Margo set her compact down and pinned Quentin with her gaze.

 

“Do you seriously believe that?”

 

Quentin scowled and tucked his feet up under his thighs.

 

“No,” He sighed. Margo brightened and ruffled his floppy hair.

 

“Good! And don’t sweat our sex, Q . . . I really don’t remember it and was out of the game for good once El came around and found you willing.” She rose from the bed and looked over her shoulder. “Want to come to Pride with me?”

 

Quentin lifted his head and the frown lines on his forehead smoothed.

 

“Yeah!” He nodded, and Margo rolled her eyes at him even as a smile curved across her painted lips.

 

“Then get your bi ass in gear, Coldwater!”

 

Eliot watched them leave the room together before he turned to his guardian angel.

 

“Is this something that could have happened, like the other thing you showed me?”

 

“Oh no, not at all. We’re looking at the present, dear boy.”

 

Eliot closed his eyes a moment as that night came back to him in flashes that burned with a halo of booze; Quentin climbing into his lap, his naked skin filling Eliot’s field of vision, their mouths meeting, the way the back of Quentin’s neck, slender and fragile, fit in his hand as he gripped it to claim Quentin’s mouth once, twice, who knew how many times. He glanced at Aziraphale and then away, and the angel smiled and touched his arm.

 

“I’m an angel, not a priest. You needn’t confess anything to me.”

 

“The way he reacted the next day, I thought I’d forced him. That I’d ruined his life because of my own selfishness.”

 

“No. He was embarrassed and guilty because Alice found him out. And if not for you helping him discover his true nature, he might have never found a path to happiness.”

 

Eliot nibbled on his thumbnail as he gathered his thoughts. They were more lucid than they’d been in days, but that sound, like the snap of a dried branch, weaved its way through them.

 

“I appreciate what you’re trying to show me,” he said at last. “But it’s because of who and what I am that Mike died. There’s no way around that—” He groped for the name and the angel gave a sigh borne of patience.

 

“Aziraphale.”

 

“Right! Aziraphale. Unless you’re going to tell me that Mike was the reincarnation of Hitler or the next mass serial killer, he didn’t deserve to die because I loved him.” Eliot felt the tremble on that last word and clenched his jaw. “And that’s what they want me to go out there and celebrate? That me being attracted to men got an innocent person enslaved to the point where I had to—” Eliot wrung an open palm over his mouth.

 

“Oh, my dear boy. You sweet child,” The angel almost sighed it, and his tone caused a crack in Eliot’s walls. The cracks began to leak and then they burst open slowly, like a decrepit dam giving way to the onslaught of a flood. The emotional impact caused Eliot’s knees to buckle and he slapped both hands over his face in one last attempt to stem the tide, but it roared forth anyway. He began to sob, rocking back and forth, all his personal wards and defenses blasted away. A rustling noise registered in his consciousness and then smell of something sweet and warm, like the return of a childhood blanket, filled his nose before it seemed to enfold him. A wall of white, its touch like the sweep of his mother’s chenille housecoat, drew him into it. Eliot found the strength to raise his head and found himself cradled in Aziraphale’s left wing. It was enormous and he welcomed it, burying his face in feathers that were at least each a foot long. He groaned softly, his sinuses clogged, an acrid taste in his mouth, like rotten cloves.

 

“I didn’t want to kill him!” Eliot cried into the soft recesses of the angel’s feathers. “I only wanted to stop him but then I saw what he really was and how the Beast had fooled me and all the pain, it was like it rolled out of me and . . . oh God, Aziraphale, I didn’t mean to kill him!”

 

“No, child. What you wanted to kill was the agony of what you felt when you realized your lover was held in thrall. But, listen to me now . . .” The wing tip dipped under his chin and raised it so Eliot was looking into the angel’s eyes, so infinitely kind. “Mike isn’t dead because of who you are. He’s dead because of what the Beast is. He is an evil thing, twisted beyond all comprehension. It was he who put the poor boy in thrall, and it was he who sent him into your path. Yes, perhaps he understood your desires, as many evil things do, and he likely understood the temptation a handsome gentleman with your interests and tastes would represent.”

 

“I should have seen through it!” Eliot cried, and Aziraphale smiled.

 

“Many people say such things after the fact. But that doesn’t make it true. I believe the Beast chose you because you’re strong, and yet you have a great capacity for love. However, you must remember, Eliot, that he could have sent a thrall to Margo, or Quentin, or any other person on campus who might have fallen for a person of another gender. Your sexual preference isn’t the reason that boy is dead, Eliot.” Aziraphale reached out and brushed a few tears away from his damp, chapped cheeks. “He’s dead because evil works in ways that are just as surprising and mysterious as the Lord’s. You cannot deny who you fought so hard to become. You cannot throw away your pride. And something at Brakebills is waiting for you. Something real, a someone who loves you. One you will have several lifetimes to know and explore—but oh, dear, I can’t give away too much.” The angel helped Eliot to his feet and then the wings were gone, tucked away wherever they were kept. Eliot considered his words.

 

“You mean Quentin—wait, did you say several lifetimes?”

 

“Did I?” The little man cocked his head and gestured the question away with a careless motion of one hand. “Well! Never mind. It’s time for me to shove on, now, I have other people to see.” He touched Eliot’s cheek with the gentle manner of a loving father, a touch the magician had never known before. “Go find your friends, Eliot Waugh, and remember that you must always fight to remain the person you worked so hard to become.”

 

Aziraphale was gone before Eliot could reply, but that phantom touch remained on his cheek. Eliot put his fingers to it and smiled before he left Margo’s room and headed for his own.

 

***

 

“So this is Pride? It’s, uh—it’s crowded!” Quentin shouted to make himself heard above the joyful noise of the parade passing him and Margo. She whooped and hollered as she caught a set of beads thrown by some passing drag queens, and Quentin blinked. “Are those _men_?”

 

“Yes, duh!”

 

“They’re so pretty!”

 

“That’s the idea! You’re such a dork!” Margo grinned and looped one of the shiny sets of beads over his head. Quentin rolled his eyes and then jumped as a long arm dropped onto his shoulder and a voice spoke in his ear.

 

“Anal beads? I hope they’ve been cleaned!”

 

Margo turned, her dark eyes wide as another equally long arm slung itself over her shoulders. Eliot grinned down at them, resplendent in black drainpipe jeans and a tight white tank top that spelled out I YNY. The heart gleamed with rainbow colors. Reflective Ray Bans covered his eyes and his dark curls spilled over his forehead in a way that was artfully careless.

 

“El!” Margo threw her arms around him. “You shit! You came!”

 

“What made you change your mind?” Quentin asked, leaning close so Eliot could hear him. It was as simple as turning his head, and his mouth met Quentin’s. The younger man’s dark eyes widened in shock and then slipped halfway closed as Eliot pulled back slowly.

 

“The thought of doing exactly that!” He grinned, and Quentin blinked.

 

“You mean you—”

 

“Yeah, Q. It’s more than booze and emotion bottles this time.” He took Quentin’s hand, entwining their fingers, and Margo turned away so Eliot wouldn’t see the glee in her expression. Eliot pulled them both close, kissing each of their cheeks in turn before turning his face up toward the sun. Long rays of sunlight were breaking through the clouds and leaving smeary wisps behind.

 

To Eliot, they looked like angel’s wings.

 

FIN

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
